


amplitude

by spookyfoot



Series: resonance [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Season 3, season 4, takes liberties with canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 23:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16901721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookyfoot/pseuds/spookyfoot
Summary: “There’s nothing out here, Coran,” Keith says. It’s not entirely true: there are fragments of ships and asteroids, the emptiness of open space, and the collapse of distant stars. It’s all right there in front of him, except for the one person he wants to see more than anything.After the battle with Zarkon, his world had snapped back to grey and it felt like something else had snapped, too. He ran to Black but the cockpit was empty and the ground beneath his feet fell away to nothing.Every so often, though, his world shocks into color. It’s like spilling ink in a glass of water, turning his head for a moment, and finding it clear the second he looks back.





	amplitude

“There’s nothing out here, Coran,” Keith says. It’s not entirely true: there are fragments of ships and asteroids, the emptiness of open space, and the collapse of distant stars. It’s all right there in front of him, except for the one person he wants to see more than anything.

After the battle with Zarkon, his world had snapped back to grey and it felt like something else had snapped, too; his world reshaped into something fragile and only breaths away from broken. He ran to Black but the cockpit was empty and the ground beneath his feet fell away to nothing. _But_ , he thought, _if I can just keep running, maybe I can avoid the fall._  

He’s driving everyone crazy. He’s driving himself crazy.

“I’m sorry, Keith,” Coran says.

Keith’s not sure which Coran’s more sorry about: that they haven’t found anything or that they both know Keith’s not going to stop looking.

_______________________________

Keith leaves Red in her hangar and walks towards the bridge, footsteps echoing through the halls. It’s taken on a deeper, vaster sense of emptiness in Shiro’s absence. The Castle has always been too big for just the seven of them—but now they're only six.

Pidge is the only one at the controls when he gets there. She’s hunched over the screen at her station, poring over the same ten ticks of security footage she’s been looking at for months.

Keith leans against the wall. He tries not to look at Shiro’s (still empty) chair, and watches her work for a little while. “Anything?”

Pidge doesn’t look up from her console, just taps out a few commands and frowns. “I think Matt may have joined up with the rebels, but I’m still waiting for more concrete intel.” She turns, glasses catching the light. “You?”

(Pidge is the only one of the other paladins who can ask how his search went without it sounding like _why are you still looking?_ )

“No, nothing,” Keith says.

(But here's what he doesn't tell her:

Every so often, though, his world shocks into color. It’s like spilling ink in a glass of water, turning his head for a moment, and finding it clear the second he looks back.)

“Number four and number five, please join us in the lounge, we have events to discuss!” Coran says over the castle intercom.

“That's us,” Pidge says. She taps out a few commands on the holo screen. “On our way!” She turns towards Keith. “Come on, they’re waiting.”

As they walk, Pidge shares small bits of information she’s gleaned about Matt. Her hands fly and she explains tracking rebel activity through the Blades and information they’ve scraped from now defunct Galra bases.

“You’ll find him, Pidge,” Keith says.

“Thanks,” she says, voice soft. She looks at him with understanding; she’s too smart not not to realize he’s not just talking about Matt.

Hunk and Lance, fresh off their mission on Puig and flush with success, are already waiting for them in the lounge.

“Finally, you two took forever,” Lance says as they enter. He turns back to Allura and Coran. “So anyway, like I was saying, the Puigians are totally team Voltron, they love us there.”

Keith only half hears the rest. Lance continues, talking about the parade the Puigians held in their honor, the autographs he signed, the art of the lions, how cool it is working with the Blades.

Keith is uncomfortably aware of how much of this war has turned into canapés and compliments, an entirely alien battlefield.

But disequilibrium is his new normal and finding himself the odd one out is nothing new.

The other paladins seem to be adjusting just fine. The Coalition is coming together, the Galra are in their heels after the loss of Zarkon, and there are rumors of in fighting, of different factions gathering allies and preparing to make a bid for power.

They're making progress.

It's just that there's one–

“—little issue. They all want to see Voltron, only we don’t really _have_ Voltron anymore.”

 _Little issue_ , it sounds too much like _pilot error_ , like Shiro could easily be reduced to someone less significant than his absence.

“We don’t have Shiro anymore, either. Everyone seems to have forgotten that,” Keith says.

“It may be difficult to accept,” Allura says, turning towards Keith, “but it is time to think about finding a new pilot for the Black Lion.”

It’s the last thing Keith wants to hear; it's code for _time to move on, time to move Shiro’s status from MIA to In Memoriam_. And he _can’t._

He won’t.

“No! I’m going to find him! Shiro is the one person who never gave up on me, I won’t give up on him,” Keith says. It's not that he doesn't understand what Voltron means to people, it's just that they don't understand what Shiro means to him.

 _Because they don't know,_ part of him says.

But he ignores it because that's part of him he can't bring himself to share. Not when Shiro hadn't even known.

(Hadn’t known that the morning of the Kerberos launch, Keith’s world had burst into color just as the _Persephone_ pierced Earth’s upper atmosphere. Hadn't known until then that Shiro's emotional frequency was perfectly in tune with his own.)

He walks out and doesn't wait to see if anyone follows him.

He could go train, but that's the first place they'll look, and right now he doesn’t want to be found. He turns left and heads for the observation deck instead.

As far as he knows, he and Shiro were the only ones who came up here. The light is wrong it always reminds Keith of the last night they spent together before the Kerberos launch talking about how one day they'd see the stars up close side by side.

( _“I’ll be up there too, one day,” Keith had said._

 _Shiro had looked at him in a way no one else had ever managed, soft but without pity. “I know you will.”_ )

Keith believed Shiro would have another shot at the stars even if Shiro himself didn’t.

“Keith?”

He turns around.

Allura is wearing a dress Keith hasn’t seen in months, hair loose around her shoulders.

The last time she’d worn it, Keith had been able to trace the shifting shades of light blue and purple woven into the fabric. Not this time.

“There you are. We need you to join us for the Coalition meeting in thirty doboshes,” she says.

“Right,” Keith says. He doesn’t mention there’s one paladin who will still be missing. “I'll be there after I change.”

“Keith, I know this is hard, but we still need to talk about finding a new black pal—”

“I'll see you later, Allura.”

“Keith—” Allura starts. She opens her mouth to say something but thinks better of it. Still, Keith knows this conversation isn’t over. “We’ll see you then.”

“See you,” Keith says, walking past her and through the doors. The walk back to his room isn’t long enough, he can’t gather himself together well enough to avoid looking at Shiro’s door. It’s a mistake. He heads into his own room instead, arms shaking as he dons his paladin armor.

( _That's not how a team works, Keith, people have to want to be part of it.)_

Keith wants to _want_ to be part of the team. But mostly he wants the person who made him feel like he belongs, no matter where they are.)

There's not much time left before the meeting starts and Keith does his best to stitch himself together. He doesn't look at Shiro’s door as he passes.

 _It'll be fine,_ he lies to himself as he takes his seat at the table.

But it's not. Kolivan mentions a power vacuum in the Galra empire, of whispers of a coup d’etat. Of a fighting a war on fronts they can’t even see. Every potential Coalition member wants to see Voltron, wants to examine what sort of muscle they’ll be hiding behind. But without Shiro there _is no Voltron_ , it’s just that Keith’s the only one who sees it that way.

_______________________________

Later, Keith stares down Black Lion, stares down all the spaces Shiro left behind and faces the truth:

That “—our mission is bigger than any one individual. Even those who are complete irreplaceable.”

That it’s easy to call someone irreplaceable when you’ve already started the hunt for their replacement.

That they’re trying to bring own a ten thousand year old empire that couldn't care less about the fact that Shiro’s gone. That they’re not stopping just because Keith’s heart feels like it has.

That he’s been through this before; that it doesn’t stop hurting; that he learned how to keep moving despite the pain a long, long time ago.

That “Shiro would be the first one to tell us to move on.”

That he doesn't have to like it— or even want it—but what Keith wants is rarely what the universe thinks he deserves.

That—“I know you're right. It's time to figure out how to reform Voltron.”

_______________________________

In the end, the lions figure it out for them, and an attack on Puig forces their hand.

Keith grips the controls, watches the cockpit light up in grey and says _this one’s for you Shiro._

But it’s not the whole truth, because it’s not just this one, it’s all of them.

_______________________________

“Keith?”

Keith’s at the table in the lounge with the others celebrating having five paladins again. There’s a plate of food in front of him but he doesn’t remember how it got there, or how he got here, either. Without color, it’s like the whole world’s gone dull; a scene through frosted glass, only the barest details visible.

He hasn’t come to grips with taking Shiro’s place.

“I’m going to go train,” Keith says.

“Keith—”

“I’ll see you later,” he says. He doesn’t wait before pushing his chair away from the table.

Outside the room, he leans against the wall for a second and takes a deep breath.

Then, just for a moment, the castle flashes from grey to a cool shade of blue. Then it’s gone before Keith is sure he saw it at all.

“What’s up with him?” Lance says.

“Lance, he’s known Shiro longer than any of us,” Pidge says.

Keith can practically hear Lance rolling his eyes. “I know, but he flew Black. I thought we were moving past this.”

“Grief’s not that simple,' Pidge says, and there’s an edge to her voice Keith hasn’t heard in a while.

“Yeah and we _all_ miss Shiro, but he’s acting like he lost his soulmate or something.”

Silence follows but Keith’s heard enough. He pushes away from the wall, away from the low hush of voices, and makes his way to his room to change.

_______________________________

Keith misses seeing red. He misses seeing Shiro; the dark curl of his lashes, the way his blush spilled over his ears and down his neck, the blue-purple veins webbing the insides of his wrist, heartbeat resting just beneath. He misses a lot of things and this time there’s no countdown to reassure him there’s an end in sight. No scheduled return date.

No promise that he can even hold onto in the empty spaces that Shiro left behind.

After the launch, after _pilot error_ , Keith’s world stayed red and blue and green; insistent, omnipresent color.

And Keith knew without a doubt that the Garrison was lying.

Now, he just wonders if he’s lying to himself. 

_______________________________

It figures in a day of betrayals that he ends up outside of Shiro’s door instead. He holds his hand up to the scanner, keeping it steady despite the fact that there’s no one there to see him shake.

Shiro’s room is just as Keith left it the last time Keith was here.

No one else has been in here since Shiro—disappeared. The others avoid Shiro’s room like it’s haunted.

They’re not wrong; it’s just that it’s not Shiro who’s haunting it.

( _“Will you cut my hair?” Shiro had asked. Coran had managed to find something like a pair of clippers on a swap moon. Shiro had gripped them in hand and held them out to Keith with a familiar look, one Keith remembered from before everything went to shit._

_“Yeah, okay,” Keith said, “weirdo.”_

_Shiro handed Keith the clippers and sat down on his bed, back towards Keith._

_Keith flicked the switch, they didn’t have long. There were things he could say, needed to say but—_

_“It's just that if this is the last time I put this armor on, I want to do it feeling like myself."_

_The clippers veered too close to Shiro’s left ear and Keith reigned them back just in time._

_“Stop it. You’re gonna be fine.” )_

Even Keith tries not to come here too often. Keith’s played this song before—spending time in all the places that remind him of Shiro, as though haunting them will somehow conjure his ghost. It's just like going through Shiro’s things after Kerberos, a sharp, marrow-deep ache that’s tough to sit with. Keith still remembers going through the mostly empty officers suite Shiro had moved into after his break-up with Adam. Remembers running his fingers over the soft leather of Shiro’s favorite jacket, hanging limp like it was waiting for its owner to return to give it its shape.  

He pulls up the covers and slides in. He’ll remake it when he leaves. No one needs to know.

The pillows don’t feel that different from his own. They’re soft, like all the bedding is in the castle. Keith thinks they still smell like Shiro—or at least he wants to pretend they do. He wraps his arms around himself and pretends they belong to someone else.

If he asked, one of the other paladins would give him a hug—but Keith doesn’t want the hug, he wants the person he’s imagining giving it.

He buries his face in the pillow and takes a few shaky breaths.

Tomorrow. He’ll put the pieces together better tomorrow. He’ll start being the leader Shiro believed he could be tomorrow.  

If Keith imagines it in Shiro’s voice, he can almost believe it, too.

He just needs tonight.

He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but he does. When he wakes up, splayed-limbed and a chunk hair wedged in his mouth, he doesn’t remember where he is at first. The bed’s facing the wrong way. There’s no knife under the pillows.

It’s only for a moment. Then it all comes rushing back and Keith feels stupid for forgetting, for falling asleep here for so long that he’s obliterated the imagined remains of Shiro’s scent and papered over them with his own.

He gets up, closes his eyes for a moment, and then rises to his feet.

It’s quick work; only a few minutes before the blankets are tucked into the sides of the bed. Shiro’s civilian clothes are still there, folded atop the dresser. He hadn’t brought much else with him and the room looks like it’s waiting for him just as much as Keith is.  Keith swallows past the lump in his throat. He doesn’t have time for this. He’ll train, and then he’ll take Black and keep looking.

( _If he’s out there_.)

Keith leaves the room as it is: neat and grey and empty. Shiro can decide what he wants to do with it when he gets back.

He heads to his own room to change, scratching the skin on his arms and legs a little as he hurries to get into his sweats.

The training deck is empty and in the months that they’ve lived on the castle ship, Keith’s never seen any of the other paladins here to train outside of their mandatory practices.

The sentry stands: silent, still, waiting.

Keith takes his stance.

“Begin training level seven.”

_______________________________

When Keith finishes, he goes to wash up in the communal showers near the gym. The sentry landed in a few good hits, but Keith gave as good as he got. Still, Keith’s body is littered with bruises. There’s particularly choice one blooming on the outside of his upper thigh; he presses his fingers against it, just to feel the dull ache that follows.

The last time he’d had a bruise in that spot was after his Marmora Trials.  Shiro had helped him bandage his wounds, and Keith had watched as his skin went purple and yellow-green, blood welling up beneath. There was a lot they could have—should have—talked about, but they didn’t. Shiro had understood that Keith needed silence. And then, they hadn’t had a chance to talk in the face of a plan meant to save the universe. Shiro had wrapped Keith in his arms before Keith left with Hunk and he’d told Keith he’d be waiting for him when he got back;  he’d told him that they’d finish this together.

_Together._

Even though the past few months have been an endless parade of “join the Coalition, we’re stronger together,” there are some things he can’t forget:

The comforting warmth of Shiro’s arms around him.

The raw pain of _pilot error_.

The haunting echo of Shiro’s screams during their last fight with Zarkon.

Lance suggested Keith was taking Shiro’s de—disappearance as an opportunity to seize power. The truth of it is, Keith’s spending most of his time neck deep on combat simulations, not even attempting to tread water. There are Galra turning on Galra, and an empire coming apart not at the seams but from it’s own fiber.

This is what Keith can’t forget:

Dissent, disillusionment, doubt; they’re not just on one side of the war.

_______________________________

Keith doesn’t go to back to his room. He can’t. He wanders the halls of the castle ship, past the library, past something that looks suspiciously like a bowling alley, past the completely useless pool. He should be more surprised when he ends up at the observation deck. He’s not.

It’s quiet here, but quiet isn’t always a good thing these days.

He doesn’t notice Pidge sneaking into the room until she’s already beside him.

“I wish I could say it gets easier,” Pidge says. “But it doesn’t.”

“I know.”

“I—” Pidge starts. Keith can tell that she wants to ask. After the way he’s been acting, they must all be curious. Must all wonder if Shiro’s his soulmate—and if not, just why Keith cares so much. Just why he can’t lay Shiro to rest and let him stay there.

But Keith hadn’t even gotten a chance to tell Shiro, and it feels wrong to let the rest of the team know before him. Even if that means no one ever knows at all.

Pidge stops herself though, and says, “I’m sorry, Keith.” She bumps against him, doesn’t quite lean into his side, but she’s close enough that he knows she’s still there.

“Thanks, Pidge,” Keith says.

And just for a moment, he doesn’t feel so alone.

_______________________________

 _We’re stronger together._ It’s easier said than done.

Planet Thayserix is a mess and it’s Keith’s fault.

He’s trying, but it goes wrong—terribly wrong—and they can’t even form Voltron at first. No one on the team is listening to him, Lance is undermining him at every turn—Keith’s not cut out for this. He keeps wishing he were in Red.

The flight over is rough; they’re out of sync with their lions and with one another and Lotor’s not making it any easier.

They descend into Thayserix’s atmosphere, essentially blind. It’s not Keith’s best plan, but he doesn’t have another one and they told him to lead so he’s doing it.

“We need to st—” Lance says, but he’s cutting in and out. There’s something about this place that’s messing with their communications. Keith pushes buttons on his console in the vain hope it’ll do something but, nothing. Black is so different than Red, although there’s something soothing about her presence that lingers in the back of his mind. She feels far more familiar than she has any right to.

The planet around them is full of hot, dense gasses and Keith can’t see any of the others. It’s blues and greens and mazes of rock; Keith is lost in more ways than one.

(He hates it, filling the spaces Shiro’s left behind like Keith expects he’ll never return to reclaim them.)

He makes all the wrong choices, says all the wrong things, and they get out of there by the skin of their teeth, mostly in spite of him rather than because of him.

If this is his tribute to Shiro it’s more of an insult.

He needs to be better.

But then—

Then his world snaps into color—and _stays_.

_Shiro._

_______________________________

This is the new shape of things:

Keith keeps looking and the universe keeps moving. Thayserix was a mess but now they know Zarkon has a son.

It’s terrifying and encouraging in equal measure.

Keith’s spent months orbiting around the empty spaces at the center of his heart, but Lotor is flesh and blood. Lotor is a target Keith can keep in his sights. Lotor is fire and fury and a challenge Keith can run himself up against until Lotor gives or Keith does; until he has nothing left. If nothing else, taking the position of Black Paladin so soon after Shiro proves Keith’s more expendable than anyone admits.

So it goes.

It’s not that easy, though, because Voltron may be the defender of the universe but the universe is doing a bang up impression of a damsel in distress. Keith takes Black every chance he gets and propels himself out to the far reaches of whatever quadrant they happen to be in. The places, the planets, the people, one after another; Keith’s ashamed to say a lot of them blur together. But he remembers every empty inch of that endless expanse of stars.

They form Voltron and Keith wonders what good the arms and legs and fire power are when he’s missing his heart. Still, despite everything, the world's still in stark, vivid color color; he knows Shiro’s out there, somewhere.

_______________________________

The next skirmish is a mess. Keith’s distracted, and it shows. It’s a supply line they’ve got in their sights, along a line of planets newly sworn as allies.

That last part is the problem: it’s made those planets a target and an easy one at that. The Coalition is growing every day but its still more militia than military and that’s never clearer than moments like this.

But there’s a call for help and so Voltron answers. Haggar’s sent a robeast to attack them; to take them out or to demonstrate her power—or both. They get into formation and the lions come together in time for them to land one good punch.

It’s not enough.

“It’s not working!” Pidge says. Green shudders as the robeast’s tentacle slams into her side.

“Suggestions would be helpful,” Hunk says. Yellow’s slower than the rest and fails to get out of the way of the robeasts’s strike in time. “Could really use some suggestions right about now.”

“He’s too strong, we need something more powerful” Allura says. Blue narrowly avoids the ext blow. “What about the blazing sword? It worked against Zarkon it should work against this.”

“Allura’s right, it’s out best chance,” Pidge says.

“Let’s do it,” Lance says. “Keith?”

Keith can feel the moment Lance slides his bayard into the port. They’re all waiting on him.

But they lost Keith around the time Allura said _blazing sword_. Keith is a million miles and six months ago away and in a completely different Lion. He’s Shiro’s right hand man.  Zarkon is there but Shiro has his bayard now and this is something they can do together. They’re stronger together.

_We were supposed to do this together._

Black’s cockpit flickers grey.

_You can’t do this to me again._

Keith freezes and Voltron falls apart, lions drifting in five different directions.

“What just happened?” Hunk says.

_Me._

“It wasn’t going to work anyways,” Keith says. “It’s got too many origins of attack, we need to come at it from all angles.”

Disbanding seems to have confused the robeast for the moment, but it’s got a well stock arsenal to throw their way and whatever reprieve they’ve earned, it isn’t going to last long.

_We’re too dependent on Voltron. We need to be able to fight on our own._

A tentacle slams into Black’s side with some sort of energy ray and Keith feels it burn under his skin. Whatever weapon the robeast is using it, it seems like it’s able to hone in on individual quintessence signatures. Which only spells one thing: not good.

Keith tightens his grip on his bayard.

“We have to form Voltron and figure something else out.”

“No,” Keith snaps. “We’re under heavy fire and there’s no time."

“Well then what are we going to do?” Lance asks, half sarcasm, half fear.

“Pidge and Allura, you have to immobilize it. Use Green’s vines tow wrap it and then, Allura, you’ll freeze them to give us more time. Lance can get a clear shot at its power source with Red and take it out.  Hunk and I will keep it distracted.”

“Why am I always bait?” Hunk asks. “You know what, never mind. I don’t want to know.”

“Get in position,” Keith says." Now!” 

Pidge goes.

_______________________________

“I can’t believe that worked,” Lance says, pulling off his helmet. The lions are all in their hangars but the others insisted they meet on the bridge to figure out what happened.

“Good thinking, Keith,” Allura says. She frowns, “but perhaps we should return to the basics. We must figure out why Voltron disbanded.”

Lance groans.

“I’m not doing that stupid gladiator maze again. At least not without some serious upgrades,” Pidge says.

“I’m with Pidge,” Lance says.

“No, not that. I was thinking we use the training helmets to strengthen our mental bond. Like you all did with S—when we started,” Allura says. She doesn’t look at Keith.

“Oh, yeah. Good idea,” Hunk says.

“That sounds way better than going up against the gladiator,” Lance adds.

“Wonderful. Let’s take a couple vargas to get cleaned up and meet in the lounge.”

As everyone heads of to their own quarters, Keith can’t help but think he’d rather face the gladiator.

_______________________________

Keith sits on his bed and takes a few deep breaths before heading to the lounge. He can make it through this. _It’s just a training exercise_. But he still walks towards the lounge like it’s his own execution.

They gather around the table and Coran passes out the training helmets. Keith is the last to slip his on.

“Keith?” Coran says. “We’re not getting a clear image from you.”

“Right. Okay,” Keith says. He redirects his attention to other memories. Fighting the gladiator on the training deck, the food fight with the other Paladins the last time they did this.

The others join in. Lance’s exuberant family, the glittering green seas of Altea, the sun warm days of Hunk’s childhood.

Then Pidge remembers the launch and Keith’s done for. He thinks of the view from the other side of the observation fence, of the way his face fit against the hollow of Shiro’s throat— _focus_.

He thinks of the stillness of the desert. The silence of the stars. The remote removal of the horizon.

“Woah, this is giving me some serious deja vu,” Hunk says. He closes his eyes and a hologram of his family flickers in front of his face. Keith looks away. “I wish these things could like, let you live a virtual reality.”

 _It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,_ Keith thinks, remembering his Marmora trials.

It’s a fatal mistake.

He’s back in that dark, cavernous room, washed in grey in purples, knife digging into the palm of his hand.

 _I’m your soulmate, aren’t I enough for you?_ hologram Shiro had said. But it’s always been Keith who wasn’t enough, who was too selfish, who was tearing the team apart even now.

“What _,”_ Lance says, “was that?”

“Nothing,” Keith says. He thinks of the desert; of the burn in his muscles when he trains; of Shiro’s arm around him while Keith did his best to hide how he struggled supporting himself —

_Stop._

“That sort of looked like the opposite of nothing, man,” Hunk says, pulling off his helmet. “It sort of looked like something. The kind of something we should talk about.”

“No.”

“Yeah I gotta side with Hunk on this one,” Lance says, looking unusually serious, “I mean there were rumors but—”

“We’re not talking about it. We’re not doing _anything_ about it,” Keith says. He tears off the training helmet and tosses it on the table.

Allura moves and blocks the exit before he can leave. “We have to talk about it. Not talking about it is the whole reason we’re here. And this is affecting all of us, we need you to trust us, Keith.”

There’s only silence.

“We didn’t know,” Pidge says quietly.

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter,” Keith is done with this conversation. He’s done with the universe demanding the pieces of himself that hurt the most.

“It does matter, this is something you should have told us!” Allura says as Hunk, Lance, and Pidge chorus their agreement.

“Why would I have told you I never even told Shiro?” he asks, and then immediately regrets it.

The room falls silent.

“You—you’re serious,” Lance says.

“Soulmates aren’t something I joke about,” Keith says. Lance goes pale and Keith knows he’s realized that Keith overheard their conversation the other day. “You guys want me to be honest with you and tell you things, I get it. But there’s only one person who I could be that honest with and you’ve all given up on him.”

In the hush that follows, Pidge, Lance, Hunk, and Allura all look at one another, clearly at a loss as to what to say.

“I’m sorry, Keith,” Pidge says. “But, you’ve been looking for him, does that mean you’re seeing color?”

Keith pauses, and weighs his options before he says, “Yeah.”

 _Sometimes_. That’s the real answer to that but Keith feels flayed open and too exposed. This the one truth he can keep for himself.

“If Shiro’s still out there” Allura says, “then why would Black choose a new paladin?”

“Because no one gave her a choice,” Keith snaps. And he tosses his helmet on the table before walking out.

_______________________________

They don’t say anything the next time he searches.

_______________________________

Keith can't stop thinking about Sven as he combs through a far off quadrant of space. For just a moment, all the colors around him had flared brighter. It pressed on bruises Keith has never been able to bury; seeing someone else wearing Shiro's face, but twisted into something different and almost unrecognizable. The eyes were all wrong. But, part of him kept expecting a broad hand to curl around his shoulder, a familiar, private smile, and an _it's good to be back_ , or _we’ll talk later, remember patience yields—_

_Focus._

And then Sven spoke and the illusion had fallen apart, taking a few more pieces of Keith down with it. Ever since then, things have been slipping back into shades of grey and Keith's slipping, too.

He taps a few buttons on Black’s console and pulls up a starmap, laying a grid over top.

This quadrant’s a good distance away from where they’d fought Zarkon, an entirely different galaxy. But if their latest adventure taught Keith anything, it’s that time and space are fickle concepts, and Keith’s not going to let a little thing like distance stop him from looking for Shiro everywhere he can.

The others know where he is; they can radio him if they need to. Black’s cockpit is lit up purple once again but it’s greying at the edges and fading fast. Keith needs to know why. He needs answers, and he’ll never forgive himself if he gets them too late.

He starts searching the first square of the grid.

There’s not much out here; it’s a star system full of barren asteroids, backwater moons, and planets long since stripped of resources; it's the very fringes of the Galra Empire. Everything else is just the empty space between stars.

Keith circles through an asteroid belt, swerving a few of the bigger ones and adjusting to the nuances of Black’s controls.

_Nothing._

He sighs and turns, running perpendicular to his previous path. He's searching on borrowed time but he needs to be sure he’s leaving no star unturned.

His radio crackles, lit up in purple. “Hey, Keith, you coming back?” Hunk asks. “We’ve got a strategy meeting and I made not-brownies.”

Keith grips the controls a little tighter. His gloves, tacky with sweat, cling to his palms. “Yeah, I’ll be there soon.”

He keeps flying, but there’s nothing other than stars. He swings around to search another sector of the grid when the colors start to fade at the edges, grey creeps in on the luminescent purple glow of Black’s cockpit.

_No._

Keith closes his eyes, breathes.

 _Patience yields focus_.

The color’s drained completely from the edges of his vision—

_Focus_

_—_ and grey is overtaking the center—

_Focus_

—and Keith _can’t_ , _he can’t—_

_Focus_

_You can’t do this to me again. Not when I’m so close—_

And then Black roars, honing in on a frequency Keith’s not sure how she found. He doesn’t care about the how because he can barely see any purple in the cockpit any more. There’s not enough _time_ and there’s too much _space_ and—

And then Keith’s somewhere else, somewhere where time and space mean _nothing_ ; it’s an endless expanse of stars, blue and purple but fading by the second.

Something flickers at the edge of his vision. The short, unsettling sensation of a hand curling around his shoulder and the astral plane flares a brighter shade of purple. But by the time he turns to look Black’s already come to a stop just outside of Thayserix.

And _there_. A small, battered Galra fighter, low on fuel and just about everything else.

“We found him.”

_______________________________

The logistics are a nightmare: they’re in open space and Keith has no idea if Shiro has a suit, or his paladin armor, or _anything_ that would prevent Keith from fucking this up right when he’s got Shiro in his sights. And he’s alone; sending a message to the Castle means wasting seconds he can’t spare.

Keith’s halfway to  abandoning the controls and outright flinging himself into open space when Black makes the decision for him. She unhinges her jaw and swallows the Galra cruiser whole before sealing it shut and re-pressurizing the room.

It’s not over though.

Because when Shiro doesn’t step out of the cruiser to meet him, Keith knows something’s wrong. Because it means, for some reason, he can’t.  

Keith fights with the Galra tech, until it gives underneath his hands.

“Shiro?” Keith says as the hatch clicks opens. It’s—it’s Shiro, but it’s not.

Beneath his helmet, Keith sees a white fringe dancing behind the glass of his visor, falling past Shiro’s chin. Shiro’s hair is longer than Keith’s ever seen it, even when he’d crash landed on Earth, he’d done it with his uncut meticulously maintained.

_What did they do to you?_

Keith twists the helmet free and Shiro’s here. He's here and he’s _real_ and he smells like sweat and stale air but he’s still. Too still.

“Shiro, please,” Keith says, voice cracking.

He can’t do this now, not after keeping himself together despite the fault line running through his heart.

But Shiro doesn’t respond.

_Focus._

That’s when Keith dredges up whatever remains of the Garrison’s first aid course; remembers the time his dad had made him practice on one of the old cracked dummies at the fire station that smelled like mass manufactured plastic and old spit.

That’s when Keith starts CPR.

_______________________________

Black charts the way back to the Castle while Keith breaks two of Shiro’s ribs.

They splinter under the pressure with a sickening crack but Keith keeps going. He’s seen worse, he’s _been_ worse. But this is Shiro, unmoving, unaware, too inanimate just to be asleep.

Keith pauses, waits, hopes for a sputter of air but everything is still.

 _Come back to me_.

He leans down, presses his lips to Shiro’s, and breathes. Some distant and dumb part of himself thinks _what if this is the only kiss we ever get._

(They’d watched movies about it, back in Shiro and Adam’s apartment. Popcorn and commentary and Shiro slowly stealing all of Keith's Twizzlers, even though he said _they taste like plastic_ , and _I don't eat sugar_ —two lies Keith never called him on. Those ninety minute races to love where time and logic fell victim to circumstance and coincidence; finding your bow-tied ending in a soulmate’s kiss and returning from the brink of death. But those are just movies, the stories people tell themselves in the dark.)

Keith pulls away, fights to stay calm, and times the compressions to his own heartbeat. He doesn’t think about how long it’s been since he started. He doesn’t think about the way Shiro’s skin has started giving over to shades of gray. The moment he thinks about anything other than restarting Shiro’s heart he’ll lose—both Shiro and himself.

_Focus._

“Shiro, please,” Keith begs, but there's no answer.

 _This is it_ , Keith thinks. This is spending so much time trying to outrun the fall you run yourself head first into the crash.

This is waking up to an empty kitchen table and then to an empty-eyed social worker knocking at his front door; this is the howl of coyotes in the desert gathered into a symphony of silence oblivious to the oncoming storm; this is the crack of Iversons eye socket beneath his fury, the scraped-red burn of his knuckles, the refusal to look back as the strap of his duffle digs into his shoulder; this is _pilot error_ except this time Keith's the pilot, caged by the smouldering wreckage with no one to blame but himself.  

He’s never noticed just how quiet it is inside the Lions before now.  

And then, a sharp intake of air and a cough. Keith freezes, testing reality to see if it snaps back into a different shape. He places his hand to Shiro’s heart, feels the shallow but steady breath, and finally breathes, too.

With one last look, he peels himself away from Shiro’s side and radios the Castle.

“Coran,” Keith says. “Have a first aid kit ready when I get back.” He almost keeps his voice from breaking.

“What? What happened? Do I need to send the other—”

“I found him.” There’s no question which _him_ Keith’s talking about.

“How—”

“I’ll explain when I get back. He’s in pretty rough shape,” Keith says. He closes the channel.

When he looks over Shiro’s still breathing and Black lets him know she’s got this handled with a small hum at the edge of his awareness. Keith scrambles back to Shiro’s side. He leans over and brushes Shiro’s hair away from his face. It’s stiff and matted with sweat but _there_ —a thin bleached white scar beside his right temple born of one hot autumn day and the two of them picking a fight with a canyon wall and losing. Badly.

But Shiro’s skin is still too cold. There’s an emergency kit near the console, packed with rations and bare bones supplies. Keith turns to grab it, bending at angle to keep an eye on Shiro while he does.  

Blankets in hand, Keith strips out of his paladin armor and undersuit, leaving him with just his knife.  

Shiro’s dressed in tattered clothing that reminds Keith of what he was wearing when he crash landed on Earth. Keith swallows, doesn’t let himself pause and leans in to start cutting Shiro free. It doesn’t take long. The prisoner uniforms weren’t made for durability—the empire doesn't expect prisoners to last long enough to need a new set.

When he gets to Shiro’s legs, Keith notices there’s a rag tied around Shiro’s left thigh, and, yeah, that needs to be changed. Keith unwinds back the bandage, revealing the angry red skin underneath. It’s shaped like a hand.

_Did he—_

_No._ He’s not going there. He lays his own palm over the shape of the burn and the skin still feels too warm. It’s recent. Shiro stirs, just a little, and lets out a soft sigh as he turns into Keith’s touch.

 _We’ll be okay. We have to be okay_ , Keith thinks as he bundles Shiro into the blankets before crawling in himself. Shiro needs to stay warm.

Shiro leans into his arms, seeking warmth, head falling into the cradle of Keith’s shoulder. When Keith curls around him, there are new scars to map.

He takes a shaky breath and exhales against the top of Shiro’s head. His questions can wait.

He’s never been so glad not to pilot; Black knows the way back to her home, Keith has his in his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> [ tumblr](http://spookyfoot.tumblr.com) // [ twitter](http://twitter.com/spooky_foot).
> 
> thanks to:  
> kai  
> robin  
> juna  
> xer  
> liz
> 
> i never meant to write a sequel but here we are. 
> 
> the concept for this fic is that soulmates aren't totally set. you have a decent amount of possibilities and some amount of agency. but clicking as soulmates—seeing the world in color—is determined by emotional resonance—and this is related to each person's individual quintessence. and when your emotions are on the same frequency as a potential soulmate, that's when you see color.


End file.
